This article was published by The Energy Mix on April 18, 2024.
Ningde, China-based battery manufacturing giant CATL was busy with two major announcements in the first half of April—a new electric vehicle battery pack with a 1.5-million-kilometre, 15-year warranty, and a long-duration stationary battery meant to deliver zero degradation over five years.
The mobile battery packs are destined for buses and heavy vehicles produced by Yutong Heavy Industries, one of China’s biggest bus manufacturers, The Driven reports. The two companies formed their first strategic partnership in 2012, then renewed it in 2022.
“The new lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery will be able to cater to different market segments, including buses, light trucks, and heavy trucks,” the news story states. One analyst said the battery, for which CATL claims zero degradation over the first 1,000 cycles, should last about 13 years in a bus that runs regular shifts every day of the year.
“The higher energy density batteries and longer life cycles are the perfect solution for heavy vehicles such as buses and trucks which do a lot of kilometres and need to carry heavy payloads,” The Driven writes. “On top of the improved energy density and lifespan, CATL has also significantly reduced production costs over the past 12 months,” announcing in January that it would be dropping the cost of LFP cells by half by the middle of this year.
Less than two weeks later, CATL was in the news again, this time with a new stationary LFP battery to boost grid flexibility and reliability. The company touted its new TENER energy storage system as “the world’s first mass-producible energy storage system with zero degradation in the first five years of use,” with no loss of capacity or power, reports Battery Technology Online.
By packing a 6.25-megawatt hour battery in a 20-foot container, the system delivers a 30% increase in energy density and reduces a station’s footprint by 20%, BTO states. “Unlike traditional lithium-ion batteries, which may pose safety risks due to their use of cobalt-based chemistries, LFP batteries offer inherent stability and reduced risk of thermal runaway, making them an ideal choice for stationary energy storage applications.”
PV Magazine has details on the new safety features CATL has built into the TENER system, adding that the company has ranked first in global market share for energy storage battery shipments over the last three years.
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